Page 1243 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 April 1994
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Mr Stevenson: A colon.
MR MOORE: A colon. There is a series of qualifications under those words. We have the words she read out, "as used at elections for the Tasmanian House of Assembly", and there is a colon. I will interpret that colon as meaning namely. Then it sets out a series of points. One of those points says:
If an elected candidate obtains surplus votes ... the votes will be transferred to other candidates in the count.
If vacancies remain to be filled surplus votes ...
It goes on to say:
This process of distributing the surplus votes of elected candidates and of excluding candidates will continue until all the vacancies have been filled.
In other words, there is a series of qualifications, but it does not deal with this specific issue of exactly how they will be counted, other than conceptually and as you would expect. It seems to me, Madam Speaker, that this amendment put up by Mr Humphries is not dealt with by either of the main points raised by the Chief Minister. Firstly, it is left open by the referendum description sheet - not that the referendum description sheet meant anything to the Chief Minister when she introduced above-the-line voting, but it does mean something to us. I think that is the point she is making. I believe that it is open on this issue. Anyway, we have made a change to the formality rules, and that means that there is room for a consequential amendment.
I listened very carefully to what Mr Humphries had to say and at present I am giving very serious consideration to the perspective that he put. When we talked earlier about different formality rules, what we were really interested in, Madam Speaker, was ensuring that people who cast their vote get full value for that vote if we can possibly deliver it. That is the argument that has been put by Mr Humphries, and it has not been countered at this stage by Ms Follett.
A briefing was given to us by Ms Follett's advisers earlier. This is a good opportunity to say how grateful I am to Ms Follett for providing those advisers to us over the last eight or 10 weeks. They have always been ready to give us information and have always been frank and open. That has been greatly appreciated. The lengthy papers that you were talking about were made available to us, or certainly some of them were, and we were taken through the extent to which this system may cause problems or a distortion of the vote. The question for us to determine now, on balance, is whether a minor distortion is caused more by the original form or by the amendment put up by Mr Humphries. That is what we are considering.
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